Fully coupled modeling for multiple clusters growth of hydraulic fractures in shale

Hydraulic fracturing in the horizontal wellbore is an effective technique in the development of shale gas. In this paper, the growth of multiple hydraulic fractures clusters is simulated numerically. The extended finite element method (XFEM) is adopted to model arbitrary propagation of the fractures in shale rock and the finite volume method (FVM) is used to discretize fluid flow in the fractures. The flow in horizontal wellbore and the dynamic distribution of the flow into different fracture clusters are consi-dered. The fully coupled field equations are solved by Newton iteration. Numerical examples are pre-sented to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the method. The propagation paths of two hydraulic fractures are modeled to demonstrate that the larger perforation entry friction can promote simultaneous growth of multiple fracture clusters.